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Painter:
Sforza di Marcantonio
Printmaker:
Dente, Marco (Marco da Ravenna)
Earthenware, tin-glazed, painted in blue, greyish-green, yellow, orange, shades of brown, and black; the reverse is pale beige and has several pin holes. Circular with wide sloping rim and shallow curved well, convex in the centre.
The front is decorated overall with the Suicide of Hero. In the foreground, Leander lies drowned in water. On the right, a man seated on a rock looks towards him, raising his right arm. On the left, Cupid stands holding a flaming torch. In the background there is an archway inscribed 'AMOR.NE. CAVSA' (Love is the cause of it), the lower part of a tower, and a doorway with a window above. Hero is shown falling from a window in the tower. The edge is encircled by a very narrow black band and a wide yellow band. The back is decorated with a wreath of blue leaves on a continuous wavy stem. The base is inscribed in blue, 'Leandro in Mare &./Hero alla finestra/.61./.S.
History note: Purchased. Given to the vendor's husband by his mother, who bought it an antique shop.
Purchased with the F. Leverton Harris Fund and the Leonard D. Cunliffe Fund
Diameter: 30 cm
Height: 4.2 cm
Method of acquisition: Bought (1995)
16th Century
Renaissance
Production date:
AD 1561
: dated '61'
During the second and third decades of the sixteenth century the maiolica industry in Pesaro was less flourishing than in the previous century. This situation improved after Guidobaldo II della Rovere succeeded to the dukedom of Urbino in 1538, because he preferred to live at Pesaro. The presence of the court stimulated local industries, and from around 1540 Pesaro became a significant producer of istoriato maiolica.
Hero was a priestess of Venus at Sestos. Leander, her lover, used to swim the Hellespont to see her, guided by a torch which she held up from a high tower. One night he was drowned, and she committed suicide by throwing herself from the tower. The lovers were mentioned in Ovid's Heroides, 18 and 19.
Sforza di Marcantonio da Casteldurante was recorded as a potter, and sometimes also as a painter, in Pesaro between 1550-2, and 1563, and when making his will in 1580. He signed himself 'SFORZA' on two panels dated 1567, respectively in the British Museum and the Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna. Dishes signed '.S.' in 1561, as this one is, and in some years up to and including 1576, are attributed to him on the basis of similarities with these panels. Sforza's choice of subjects, iconography, and inscriptions suggest that he had been contact with the Urbino maiolica painter, Francesco Xanto, probably in the late 1530s. Xanto painted several dishes with versions of 'Hero and Leander' between 1532 and 1538. He probably knew the story from a translation of Ovid's Heroides, but on the backs of the dishes he quoted from Francesco Petrarch's Trionfi, III, 21 'Leandro in mare ed Hero a la fenestra' (or Trionfi, II in editions with commentary by Bernardo Ilicini, first published in 1475). The first dish decorated with this subject which is attributed to Sforza was painted in 1546; the latest, in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, is dated 1576, and initialled '.S.' Both, like the Fitzwilliam's dish, have an inscription from Petrarch, and the figure of Leander used by Xanto, which was taken from a Marcantonio Raimondi school print, known as the 'Battle with the Cutlass' by Marco Dente (Bartsch, XIV, p 171, no. 211). The three dishes illustrate the persistence of popular themes over a long period, and the repetitive nature of much maiolica painting.
Decoration composed of high-temperature colours ( blue, greyish-green, yellow, orange, shades of brown, and black; the reverse is pale beige) tin-glaze
Tin-glazing
: Earthenware, tin-glazed, painted in blue, greyish-green, yellow, orange, shades of brown, and black; the reverse is pale beige and has several pin holes.
Painting
Accession number: C.21-1995
Primary reference Number: 79589
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Applied Arts
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Dish" Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/79589 Accessed: 2024-11-21 13:54:31
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{{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/79589
|title=Dish
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-21 13:54:31|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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<img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa19/C_21_1995.jpg"
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<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Dish</figcaption>
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